Writing Opposite Langston Hughes, Poetically or “A Quiet Longing for Life”

I took the last line of a poem by Langston Hughes (“and death a note unsaid” from his “Note in Music” poem) and wrote the opposite of that one line. The rest just…flowed out.

Life was many whispers said
in the palms of everyone
who lived and loved you,
both out loud and in secret.

And those whispers
were cupped against your ear
with a lightning roar of thunder
and passion, and whatever
passes for hope on
depression’s due date.